


Well Met

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [1]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Reincarnation, Rimming, Shakespearean style language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:22:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2238837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is 29 years old and needs a break from snide whispers before he just stabs someone. But in his place of sanctuary is a beautiful stranger -Khan Noonien Singh, victim of a time surge after an experiment goes wrong. At first it seems they'll fight, but then other kinds of duelling seem more appealing. </p><p>But these two men are making bad choices, and their fates are written in the stars. Will their souls ever learn to make better choices? How long will it take them to find each other again, and what will they have to learn before they do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well Met

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> I went to see Martin Freeman in Richard III recently, and got talking to Atlinmerrick about how I always felt a little bit sorry for Richard as portrayed by Shakespeare. He's a right evil little bastard to be sure, but for me his humanity has always been shown in two key scenes: the early one with his mother, in which he craves a supportive word of any kind from her, and she just says basically 'I had two strong sons, and you, you monstrosity'; the later one is when he wakes from nightmares of the people he has murdered and then confesses out loud to himself that 'I do not love myself; I confess I rather hate myself". He's a bastard, but he's a very human bastard.
> 
> As the conversation continued, Atlin's eyes lit up and she looked at me and she said: "Richard III/Khan crossover story!" And i said, 'no, I don't have the time, or any idea....oh, hang on." So this story is all her fault. I'm going to blame her for the faux Shakespearean dialogue too, because I can. 
> 
> And also because Fuck you, Atlinmerrick. And I mean that with love. (And thanks for helping me work out what Khan needed to learn.)
> 
> [This series now has cover art! ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2398139)

Richard endured the whispers as long as he could, and then he went riding. It was that or thrash someone, and since he could not thrash the authors of the insults he heard in his brother’s house, riding it would have to be.

_Who’d have thought the Duke of Clarence would have so ill-formed a brother?_

As though the twist in his spine made him somehow deaf, and the useless arm made him somehow too stupid to notice when people were talking about him.

_Young Richard’s countenance affrights the milk to curdling._

Richard had been born with his spine out of true and his right arm atrophied, and he had heard such whispers all his life. Sometimes the muscles ached and spasmed awfully, and as a babe and child he had been fractious and difficult to please, he knew. Further, he had not been born under a smiling star, being given rather more to serious thought and plain speaking, which was less pleasing to the ear than flattery.

Perhaps, Richard thought as he kicked the mare to a gallop across the fields towards the woods, if he had known better how to flatter and craft sweet lies, there would have been more kindness. He did not think himself unkind, either, though he was oft accused of the vice. When he had no good thing to say, he kept his counsel, but then he was labelled surly or, worse, _thick-witted_. As though his silence without heralded a silence within.

Insensible dolts. All those braying asses made so much noise it would deafen the birds, and barely a thought made even a timorous noise in those empty heads.

No, Richard thought, I could not and never will be one of those smiling types of cripple, who praise God for their deformities with cherubic countenance, singing foolish songs and playing the jester so that others of better form and weaker brain could smile and laugh, and praise God for their deliverance from affliction. He was a man who spoke plain, and dissembled not, even when it were politic to do so. His words were as straight as his back was bent, and there was no reward for that.

_Thou twist-backed lumpen toad._

Richard scowled as he rode through the woods, down the well-trod path. He was not so bad as all that, he believed. He was short, but he walked straight enough, and though his right arm hung stiff and useless, his left was strong and wielded both pen and sword with skill. The limp which plagued him in weariness was hardly noticeable most of the time, and never at all on horseback, where he excelled.

 _Were I but mounted from daybreak to star-rise, they would never know_ , he thought bitterly. _I could rule a kingdom from a horse and be counted a great man._

And yet he was Richard the cripple, Richard the blockhead, Sour-faced Dick and the ape-backed uncle. There were those who thought that his body was a reflection of a soul likewise afflicted. Even his mother thought so. She did not say as much, but she did not deny it either. She loathed to touch him. His brothers teased him, as brothers are wont to do, but there was more affection in their words for their hunting dogs than they had for him.

 _How does his mother bear the shame of having birthed him? Wonder not that she prays each day for his soul, and her own_.

Well damn them all to hell, anyway.

Richard reined in the mare to a walk and guided her off the path. He tucked his head to spare his eyes from the whip of low-hanging branches and urged his mount along to the little glade by the brook. None but he visited it. It was a sanctuary, of sorts.

Or, it had been.

As Richard dismounted and led the mare to the water, he knew that someone else was there. Someone in the cool green shadows, beyond the willow tree, above the rocks over which the brook plashed and gurgled.

He feigned ignorance of the intruder for a moment and spoke softly to the mare, concealing the more covert action of unsheathing his dagger.

“I would sheath that thing, if I were you.”

The deep, smooth voice emerged from everywhere in the green shadows, but Richard continued in his motion – he turned unhurriedly, the horse to his back, and as he did he raised the dagger. Then he raised an eyebrow, sardonic and sharp as the weapon he held.

“And I would flee, if I were thee,” he said, holding firm and scouring the woods for the trespasser “And therefore I must conclude we are not wise men.”

The laughter that rolled out from the shadows was rich and dark and delighted. Then, from between the willow and an ash tree, the man emerged.

Tall and dark-haired, the stranger seemed to manifest from the trees themselves, with eyes pale as a winter sky and a mouth as pink as a bud of a chestnut tree. His muscular and well-formed body was pale as the aspen, and he walked with a graceful sway, as though a breeze stirred him to motion.

The stranger was quite the most beautiful thing that Richard had ever seen.

Still, for all the stranger could see, Richard remained singularly unimpressed. “State your business.”

The stranger tilted his head to one side to study him, and Richard felt once more acutely aware of his deformities.

“My business is none of yours,” said the stranger in a voice haughty and acerbic.

Richard was sick to death of that tone of voice. Where a moment before he had frowned and begun to look away, feeling shame in the presence of this perfect creature, now he was defiant and filled with anger. He raised his dagger.

‘Know you not that I am Richard, Duke of Gloucester and brother to the Duke of Clarence, on whose lands you trespass? Speak with a civil tongue, lest I cut it out to teach you manners.”

The stranger smiled at him oddly, as though reluctantly impressed with the cold-delivered threat.

“Greetings then, Richard, Duke and brother of a Duke, neither of whom mean anything to me. I am Khan.”

“And what is ‘Khan’ to me?”

Khan shrugged. “I’m not much given to titles, Richard. I am nothing to you either, and I don’t intend to be in this wretched place a minute longer than can be helped.”

“You are lost, then?” Richard did not yield, only held his dagger steady and challenged the trespasser with a hunter’s eye.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You speak riddles, Khan, so let me be plain. I distrust and mislike you. I say again, state your business in these lands.”

Khan smirked again, as though amused by a child’s insolence, and Richard had to take and hold a breath to keep himself from stabbing the smug knave. He narrowed his eyes and gave the kind of tight smile that, on battlefields, heralded a bloody conclusion.

Khan returned that look with a bladed one of his own, and Richard could not help but admire it. He liked a challenge.

“I’m a scientist,” said Khan after a moment, “My team and I were experimenting with a quantum field generator coupled with a Heisenberg engine and the energy captured from a black hole, and instead of folding space, we appear to have drilled a wormhole in time, and here I am until my brothers and sisters can repair the burned out parts and repeat the experiment with sufficient alterations to allow my return.”

Then he stood, looking superior and cold and just a very little bereft.

Richard frowned, tilted his head one way, then the other, like a bird of prey examining a mouse. “You are as a spirit,” he conceded, “Tall and proud as nature, and more beautiful than spring, yet you babble like a dream. You travel like a worm, you say, to despite the time?”

Khan blinked. He frowned. He regarded the hawk-like cripple thoughtfully. “I come from the future,” he said more plainly, “By accident. I am forced to stay here until the circumstances that sent me here can be rectified.”

“Ejected from heaven?” Richard asked and at last he sheathed the dagger, nodding sagely. “Aye, I know the feeling. All out of time with the time. I am not made myself for the peace upon us now, though there may be bloodier days ahead. I am better made for warlike things.”

“You?” the sneer spilled out, “You’re hardly fit for frontline fodder. My siblings and I were made for war.” Khan spread his arms to show the strength of his shoulders and chest and even his hands. “Purpose built. You would not last a _heartbeat_ in a fight with the least of us.”

In a flash, the dagger was in Richard’s hand again; and he balanced on his feet and raised it, ready to attack.

“Come thee to my sole place of sanctuary to mock me, too?” he snarled, “Raise your sword or your grace's magic and I'll have at thee, spirit or no. Thou art a churlish villain. 

“You can’t think you will win,” sneered Khan, hardly deigning to curl hands into fists. 

“I would rather be cut than mocked to death. Raise up thy sword, I say.”

Khan raised up something very like a dagger but rather more like a stone and pointed it at the ground before Richard’s feet. A moment later a bolt of fire pierced the earth. Smoke arose, and the smell of burned vegetation.

Richard, who had flinched but not recoiled, smiled a frightening smile. “Pretty magic,” he said, “That my senses tell me would sear me through. You, Zeus-like, throw lightning, but if you are a God I do not believe in thee. Fight me or kill me, but mock me not. I am not afraid of you.”

“No,” said Kahn with grudging admiration, “You aren’t. I’d put it down to ignorance, or stupidity, but you don’t strike me as stupid.”

“I thank you for the compliment, knave. Now raise your sword.”

“No.” Khan put the stone-like dagger away and smiled, less condescendingly than before, “It wouldn’t be fair and to tell the truth you’re the most interesting person I’ve met all week.”

“I am indeed an interesting man,” Richard agreed, deadpan, “For I have a scholar’s mind and a fishwife’s wit, the humour of a cat and the heart of a lion, and were I but made as straight limbed as my father, I would be a prince instead of a half-blasted ape. But I can fight, and I will make thee eat thy mocking, for all thy beauty.”

For a long moment they faced each other, the one fed up with being unseen for his true self, the other unaccustomed to being both praised and challenged in the same breath by an enemy. People were usually afraid of him, and resented his unearthly, scientifically crafted genetic perfection.

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“Alas for all your wants, as I cry alas for mine.” Richard approached him by a step.

“Would it help if I apologised?”

“I have heard counterfeit apologies by the cartload, tendered by those who should love me better by ties of blood. What can you bend to my ear that will make a more pleasing sound than scorn? You cannot hide it from me. Scorn is the music played me from my birth and for all my nine and twenty years, and I will cut the harpstrings of your throat if you offer it me.”

Khan blinked again and slowly stepped towards the angry man. He lowered his head as he approached, humbly, and held his hands, palm up, and when the point of Richard’s dagger was pressed against his black-clad breast, he said:

“I apologise for the insult I offered you, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. It was churlish of me, as you say. And unkind. And not a word of it based on evidence. I am ashamed to have leapt to such false conclusions.” He raised his head and the pale blue eyes met the Duke’s implacable blue gaze. “You are singular,” he said, “Intelligent, and full of courage and rage. These three things I understand well. I spoke too hastily.”

Khan smiled into the blue eyes that scowled into his, and realised something else.

“You said I was beautiful.”

“Aye,” Richard admitted grudgingly, “Though I read that spirits often are.”

“I’m not a spirit,” said Khan, “Though it’s true I’m not quite human.”

“You seem man enough to my senses,” said Richard.

“Your senses. Yes.” Khan reached to take Richard’s hand that still held the dagger and pushed it gently away. “You undress me with your eyes.”

Richard gave his first indication of panic. He swallowed. The corner of his mouth twitched. His eyes crinkled uncertainly at the edges. But he could not look away from the tall, beautiful man that looked down at him.

“You have,” said Khan, “Very beautiful eyes.”

Richard stared; swallowed; quivered. “You mock me still.”

“No,” said Khan softly to the first sound of fear he had heard in that voice, “I do not. Your eyes are the most astonishing blue flecked in gold. They are a window to the mind behind them. If I had paid attention to them from the start, I would never have mistaken you for one of these uncouth peasants who have plagued me this past week. You are a man of learning, and depth, your eyes tell me. And they are quite, quite beautiful.”

Richard’s mouth twisted in a painful half smile. “Alas, nature did not concede to paint the rest of me with so pleasing a palette.”

“Then that is nature’s fault and not yours,” said Khan, “The parts she finished building she did exceedingly well.”

Richard… blinked.

“…What?”

“The curvature of the spine and the nerve damage to your arm and leg occurred _in utero_ , but your physique is very strong. Well-developed musculature…” Khan ran his fingers over Richard’s bristly jaw, and Richard, for a wonder, allowed him to. “Good bones,” Khan continued, “Excellent cranial development. You’re short by my time’s standards, but you have stature enough for the standards of your own. And you’re clearly intelligent.”

Richard opened his mouth to speak, failed to find speech, and closed his mouth again.

“Do it again,” said Kahn with an odd, yearning lilt.

“Do what again?”

“Undress me with your beautiful eyes.”

Richard inhaled a sharp breath. “I am not a catamite,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.

“Is that what you people call it? Well, I am, some of the time, and you are…” It was Khan’s turn to lose his words for a moment. He looked down at Richard’s mouth, then up at his eyes again. “It has been a lonely week since I arrived, even with your countrymen I’ve met. A man surrounded by crickets feels hardly less alone, after all, just tired of the noise. But you… Richard, Duke of Gloucester, you’re no chirping, brainless cricket. You have an intriguing mind, and beautiful eyes, and I want you to undress me with your eyes before I kiss you. What do you say? Shall we abandon enmity and be lovers instead?” Khan smiled then, a dancing expression that made his ethereal, faerie beauty at once warm and human.

“You would let me touch you?” Richard asked with curious bitterness, “And what shall such a gift cost me?”

Khan’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Why should it cost you anything?”

“When does it not?”

“I want to kiss you. I think I want to do rather more than that. If you’ll let me.”

“If _I_ …?” Richard frowned, then straightened his spine, or as straight as it would go. “Kiss me, then,” he commanded, “Of your own free will.”

Khan obeyed, though his manner was more amused than subservient. But he bent his head to press those pink bow lips to Richard’s mouth, and kissed him. Richard tilted his own face up into the kiss, and tasted not mockery nor barely concealed revulsion, but warm willingness that rose in heat from Khan’s lips and throat and whole body.

Richard’s one good arm let the dagger fall and he wound his arm around Khan’s waist and tugged him impatiently closer. Richard was braced for the recoil, or for blows, and neither came. Instead, Khan fitted himself more closely in Richard’s grip, and now deepened the kiss. Richard nudged up into the pressure and parted his lips to taste the sweetness of mouth and tongue.

When the kiss ended, Richard was breathing hard. The heat from Khan’s body now emanated from Richard’s own as well.

“More of that,” said Khan in a voice both mellowed and made husky with want, “But first, we bathe.”

Richard wished to protest the need. He had bathed only yesterday, and also it was one thing for this strange creature to declare that Richard had beautiful eyes and that the half of him that was not twisted was well-formed – it was quite another to disrobe and reveal his imperfections so boldly. Especially when Khan was stripping with such unabashed speed to reveal so perfect a body.

Khan, bending to remove his trouserings, a posture that emphasised the captivating curves of his rump and the athletic muscles of his long legs, glanced up at Richard and smiled, somehow both coy and seductive. “I am undressed already, so this look must be you doing other things with your eyes. They are quite… penetrating.”

“If I were dreaming,” said Richard, “I would know what to make of you. But as I am awake, I am all at sea.”

“I know the feeling,” murmured Khan, and with unearthly grace, stood naked in front of Richard. “Are you afraid to show yourself?”

Richard scowled. “I am afraid of nothing.” Though he was afraid of this.

His own fear decided him. He jerked his chin up defiantly, and with his one hand swiftly undid the fastenings of his shirt and trews. Khan crouched to assist with his boots, and Richard would have snarled him away, except that the man’s head was level now with Richard’s crotch, and his breath was hot those scant inches away from his prick, and the position was too close to what Richard already fantasised: that dark head breathing and bobbing between his thighs.

“That’s better,” said Khan, grinning up at him, “Want and you shall have.”

“That is not the way of things,” whispered Richard.

“It is today.”

Naked, Richard stood, his compact body standing tall and taut as a longbow (aye, and with its own curve too) and Khan placed his hands against Richard’s thighs and slowly rose. His hands stroked firm and long up Richard’s legs (and the right tremored slightly but held) and over his hips; up his ribs and to his wrists. Up his arms, both strong and withered; to his shoulders both square and hunched, to his neck – where Khan slipped his fingers around Richard’s nape, and stroked his throat with long thumbs, and bent to kiss Richard’s mouth again.

“Do not fear my touch,” Khan said, “I won’t hurt you.”

“It is not the touch that wounds,” Richard confessed. He raised his hand to hold Khan’s cheek, and to angle it down so that he could look into those winter eyes. He examined them, and the miracle happened again. Nothing in those eyes held intent to strike.

“You penetrate me with your eyes again,” smiled Khan, “I would much rather we were less metaphorical. But I like to be clean. I came here to bathe today, you know.”

Richard blinked. He had assumed that Khan the Beautiful had wanted _Richard_ to be less soiled. It had not occurred to him that Khan had looked to his own cleanliness.

“Then I will bathe you,” he offered suddenly.

Khan smiled again, his eyes sparkling, and for a reply, he stepped away from Richard and into the water. Richard watched him, descending like a water nymph returning to its habitat, but then Khan held out an arm from which water streamed lovingly over curve and plane, pale skin and fine hairs. Richard took the hand and stepped into the brook, too.

Khan had retrieved a sweet-smelling lump of soap from the folds of his oddly made coat. He made a lather and applied it to his own chest, and then to Richard’s. Richard sniffed at it.

“It smells of honeysuckle,” he said, mystified, “And cedar.”

“Yes.”

“I thought that scent had come from your skin alone, but this was in your pocket.”

Khan laughed, but it wasn’t an unkind sound. “I traded for it and then made it better with plants from the wood. Let’s smell alike then, shall we? Here. I’ll wash your back first.”

Richard hesitated, then cursed himself for a coward and offered his body for the task, head held high and his eyes and ears sharp-tuned for any insult.

Khan soaped and rinsed Richard’s body, ruined arm and all, in his most intimate places too, which made Richard gasp and then keen softly with desire. He had never had another person, let alone so beautiful a man, touch him with such care. Khan slid his scented, strong hands down Richard’s bent back, over the curve of his rear, thence between his cheeks to wash that sensitive place with teasing firmness. Richard’s prick grew hard and insistent even in the brook’s flow of cool water.

“Now me,” Khan said, placing the soap in Richard’s hand and turning his back.

Richard lathered the soap between his hand and Khan’s back and when there was enough foam, he dropped the soap back into Khan’s palm and washed with firm strokes that long, pale, straight spine, and over and between that bounteous rear – his hand firm, exploratory, wanton. He was rewarded with a moan and Khan spreading his legs, leaning forward slightly to present his bounty more readily. Richard cheerfully obeyed the unspoken request, stroking and rubbing the puckered skin he found. He pressed close to Khan’s back and kissed it while his fingers worked.

The mare, Richard noted absently, simply gazed at them and seemed undisturbed. _What nature does not mind,_ thought Richard with a sense of being blessed, _then I will not mind either, nor be ashamed. I want him. I want him._

Khan turned in Richard’s embrace, but only to pull their bodies closer together, their hard pricks meeting under the water as their mouths met above. Periodically, Khan’s large, noble hands would stroke and brush over Richard’s whole body, left and right, and Richard whimpered with the novelty and fire of it.

_To be touched so, oh to be touched…_

And suddenly they were scrambling to the shore, and Richard sought the rug he had stowed in the saddlebag for his own respite and laid it out in the glade, under the dappled light, and he knelt down on it. Khan knelt with him, kissing him, stopping only so their eyes could meet before resuming ministrations tender-hot, carnal-reverent.

Richard arched into the hand that cupped his cock and bit softly on the throat beneath his mouth. His ran his fingers through Khan’s dark hair, to hold Khan’s mouth against his shoulder, and when Khan bit him in return, Richard laughed in giddy, delighted desire. When Khan licked the spot a moment later, tongue swiping heavy, then sucked hard to leave a mark, Richard clung to his shoulders and in his turn sucked love bites into Khan’s neck.

They kissed and sucked and licked and bit, head to toe, a nipping desire, a tasting love.

“Turn for me,” Khan said and Richard, who would turn his back on no enemy, turned for this sudden lover, belly down on the blanket, while Khan ran his hands up the back of Richard’s legs, to his buttocks, which he fondled and then, to Richard’s surprise, parted.

“What are yooo…aaaaah…” Words fled to incoherence as Richard felt Khan’s bristled jaw against the soft skin that earlier had known Khan’s strong fingers. His breathy keening grew as he felt now Khan’s mouth, his lips, his tongue, against skin never so exposed to the world. Softer, wetter, warmer than fingers, Khan’s tongue slid over the skin and Richard appreciated anew that bathing was both a necessary and delightful way to begin this encounter.

Khan’s head bobbed low, and Richard spread his legs further so that his lover’s long tongue could lap at his balls, at his skin, back into the heat of his hole, before rising up to the dip of his spine, and up further, to where his shoulder bunched and his arm hung useless, and Khan kissed him there too.

Richard did not know which kiss made him feel the most exposed, nor which assured him most that he was not unclean, as he others had always believed. That angel mouth on the most reviled parts of man, on the most reviled parts of Richard, made those parts become suddenly redeemed.

“I want to fuck you now,” Khan breathed his molten voice into Richard’s ear, “And later I want you to fuck me too. Are you ready for me?”

“I will be Leda to your Zeus-like swan,” Richard agreed, arching his backside towards Khan as best he could, “And I will take thee too, and soon. You drive me hard towards the little death with your touch.”

Khan kissed and licked south again, and parted Richard’s cheeks to kiss and lick and make wet his hole before slipping one strong arm under Richard’s hips and lifting him. Richard had only one good arm to hold him up, but he crooked it beneath him and bent his knees and presented himself. Soon, Khan’s hands still firm on his hips, Richard felt Khan’s prick rubbing now against the skin, nudging in. Slick, sticky wetness smeared against the entrance and Richard, not afraid in the slightest of a little pain, pushed back against the thick cock.

With a low moan, Khan breached the entrance, and Richard groaned and pushed back harder still.

“You are eager, little prince,” Khan said, panting a little.

“Do not speak,” hissed Richard, “But fill me.”

Khan obliged, pushing slowly while Richard pushed more impatiently back, and then they were moving, Richard rocking back to impale himself willingly as Khan thrust into him. The pace quickened and Khan stroked Richard’s hips with each thrust, forward and back. Richard could not touch himself, needing the one arm to prop him up and his useless arm tucked beneath him and of no aid, and Khan refused to offer relief, only fucking Richard hard. Richard, making little grunts of pleasure, met each motion and rolled his hips with wanton purpose, until Khan’s fingers dug into his skin and held tight as he came and fucked and came some more.

Khan paused, panting hard, for a moment longer, then rolled aside. He grinned over at Richard, who rested his forehead on his arm and otherwise held his pose on his knees, arse in the air, come running down his arse and thighs.

Khan reached under Richard to fondle his balls, drawn tight against his body, and along the thick, flushed shaft of his leaking cock. Richard moaned and thrust and then stilled himself.

“You promised that I should penetrate you,” Richard reminded him hoarsely.

Khan only grinned then turned to get on his hands and knees, arse presented as Richard’s had just been. “And you promised to take me, soon,” Khan said.

With speed as though unhindered by the arm, Richard was behind him, was rubbing his thumb over Khan’s entrance. He gathered up Khan’s seed from between his own legs and used it to make slick Khan’s hole, then rubbed his own cock against it, adding to the slippery lubricant. He pushed then, and Khan pushed back, and with his hand gripping Khan’s left shoulder, Richard thrust. He angled his hips and rolled them to bury himself fully in his new lover, and Khan responded to the angles Richard found most pleasing; the ones over which he was most vocal.

The sight of his cock pushing into the pale, perfect rise of that backside undid Richard and he came, swearing imprecations to heaven, before folding, spent, over that strong back. He lay there along Khan’s spine, Khan holding the both of them up, and turned his head to kiss the skin before pushing aside and flopping bonelessly to the blanket, facing upward into the canopy of leaves.

To Richard’s surprise, Khan moved to lie close pressed beside him, an arm flung across Richard’s waist, Khan’s lips pressed to his ear. “Was that not better than duelling to the death?”

“Yet there were swords involved,” Richard countered. He was surprised when Khan laughed. People did not usually appreciate his jokes.

“Swords and sheaths too,” Khan agreed, and Richard laughed in his turn.

Khan kissed Richard’s brow, and his face, and his hands resumed a gentle roaming, stroking Richard’s body.

It took Khan a moment to realise that Richard was weeping. He drew back to look at Richard’s face in concern, and Richard looked away, embarrassed.

“Forgive these womanish tears,” he said, voice harsh, “’Tis nought. I weep only for that which is unaccustomed. Do not doubt that I am a man.”

“How could I doubt that, when you’ve so recently given me excellent proofs of it.” When Richard did not laugh, Khan rubbed his thumb through the tracks of the tears then kissed the damp, unshaven cheek. “Weeping is not women’s work,” he said softly, “If it draws on the wells of your heart. Tell me, Richard. To what are you unaccustomed?”

Richard closed his eyes. His ears were no more used to tenderness than his skin, and it drew from him confessions that harder asking would have left stoppered up.

“The last time I was embraced in full, ‘twas in my mother’s womb,” he said, “For certainly I have no other memory of it. Since my ejection from that Eden from which all children are sent forth into the cold world, she touched me only when she must and as soon as could be done, scarce a week after the cord was cut, she handed me in swaddling to my wet-nurse, who took me so only for the payment she earned for the deed. I have not been held since, except by those paid to endure the chore.”

Khan gathered him close and nuzzled his ear. “Then, Richard, my prince, I’ll hold you, for no more pay than you give the sun for shining. It is no burden for me to hold you. Though if you’re in the mood for payment, I’d take a smile from you. I can already see that they are rare and therefore precious. And there you are. You smile. And now I have my own sun to shine on me.”

“You are mad,” said Richard, laughing.

“Many think so.”

“I love your kind of madness,” Richard said, “I give thanks I met you, and thanks that you find me… pleasing, most especially as you are yourself most perfect.”

Khan shifted again, to half cover Richard’s body with his own and so increase the heat of their skin where it met.

“Neither you or I asked for the bodies that were given us, Richard,” Khan said, a little wonderingly, “I was built by science for perfection, but I am no more responsible for this body, nor can claim credit, than can you for the form fate gave you. You do have a wonderful mind, though, and what you do with that gift is in your sole command. You have excellent clay there, Richard. You can make bricks with it – or build a _monument_ , something worth remembering. That’s what I plan, at least, with the mind that is my own, and my siblings. We will show those who tried to use us what it is to be a slave.”

“You will be magnificent,” Richard assured him.

“I will,” agreed Khan, and they both laughed again at the confidence of the assertion.

Richard stretched luxuriously, enjoying the satisfying ache in body and limb, then rolled onto his belly.

Khan sat up, his long limbs graceful, and Richard thought he was about to leave. Instead, Khan placed the palm of his hand at the nape of Richard’s neck and ran it flat down Richard’s back, over his rump and thighs, then up again. When his hand reached Richard’s shoulder, he stroked tenderly down the wizened arm. Richard held himself still, not sure what he thought of the gesture, combined as it was with that look of speculation on his lover’s face.

“Were I able to take you back to my time, we might be able to fix this,” said Khan, more to himself than to Richard.

Richard’s stillness took on a dangerous quality. “Do not say such things to me.”

Khan hesitated. “Wouldn’t you like to be healed, if it could be done?”

“To make a disappointed mother happy in her son? The Devil take her. To please a court that cannot see past a bowed back to, as you say, _the windows of mine eyes_?” Richard spat the words out, “Satan rot them. You think me misshapen and unworthy after all, and so the Devil take thee too.”

“Never _unworthy_. But surely it hurts?”

“At times, but all men hurt and many bear milder hurts less well than I. To change myself to ease my path is, I suppose, a temptation, but those peacocks will not change for me. Why should I for them? Let Satan piss on all of you.”

When Khan’s warm laugh bloomed out in the glade, Richard turned to glare, his eyes like fire, but Khan’s expression was affectionate. “I like you, Richard, and you are perfectly right. Let the devil and gods alike piss on all of them. We’ll be our own men, in our own fashion.”

Richard did not cease his scowling. Khan bent to kiss his shoulder.

“I do not think you misshapen,” Khan said carefully, “Or rather, I am not repulsed by your shape. It’s the body you wear, and I find myself fond of it, and of you. For a mere human, and a primitive one at that, you are compelling, and very worthy indeed. And also an excellent bedmate.”

Richard relaxed marginally. He raised once more that sharp eyebrow of his and regarded his companion with a critical judgement. “Beautiful men are too often dull of wit, satisfied to be beautiful and nothing more. You, I am relieved to note, gather both beauty and intelligence together. I shall keep you as a bedmate, should you be so inclined. It appears I may also be fond of you. You, too, are compelling. For a knave.”

Khan shifted to fit himself over Richard’s body, and was pleased when Richard’s legs parted to allow Khan’s legs to slot down between his thighs. Khan sprawled over the shorter man, wriggled his prick to nestle in the cleft of his lover’s backside, and nuzzled the back of his neck. “I am inclined,” he said, “And you’ll find me ready to act upon that inclination again soon.”

Richard pushed his rear against Khan’s crotch and enjoyed the sensation of swelling warmth there. “We shall bathe again,” he stated, “And you shall suck me, and I will lick and bite your nethers, if it please you.”

Then he grinned over his shoulder, blue eyes sparkling a good-humoured challenge, and Khan nipped Richard’s good shoulder, and licked it, and replied: “My prince, that pleases me immensely.”

*

For the next week, Richard would quit his brother’s court each morning and ride to the glade. He brought food, cushions, clothing ‘more suitable than those strange black underthings’ and a sword so that his companion could defend himself as needed. Khan insisted he could do so without weapons; and likewise insisted he could not return to the Duke of Clarence’s halls for more sheltered lodgings.

“My position has been plotted by my siblings. I have to stay close by, and that draughty pile of stones is too far.”

Richard brought books too, and he taught Khan to read the flowing script. He taught Khan what he knew of history, literature, alchemy. Khan had to do no more than read each book once and it was memorised. He in turn taught Richard that there were more to stars than divination.

“I come from out there,” Khan said one evening as the first stars shone in the darkening sky. They lay naked on their backs on the blanket, replete with wine and sex. Khan raised an elegant arm and pointed. Richard, lying close to him, followed the line of his arm and hand. “Millions of kilometres and hundreds of years from here, I was – or will be – born in a laboratory, the culmination of a great experiment, and having made me, humanity will be terrified of me.”

“You are most intimidating,” Richard said, not in the least concerned.

“I am,” Khan told him sternly.

Richard reached out and petted Khan’s spent prick. “I have just said so,” he said in a tone of mild complaint that he was not believed, but he softly squeezed his lover’s shaft and rubbed it lightly. “Although I am of course not easy to intimidate. Rather say I find you impressive. Also, you have the stamina of a bull in rut.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Do.”

“I suppose you would like a compliment in return?”

Richard let his fingers drift upward to tickle Khan’s flat abdomen, to flex in the short dark curls surrounding his lover’s swelling prick. “I will give you one for me. I am a nobleman and may be a prince, and perhaps I could be a king. Do you not feel honoured?”

“Indeed yes,” Khan said, and as so often happened in this man’s presence, he laughed. “You have honoured me with your kingly sceptre on many occasions, and made princely use of your tongue. I imagine from this that you are a most skilled orator.”

“I speak direct and to the point,” said Richard, laughter in his voice too, “And my speeches leave men crying out to God for mercy.”

“I can swear to that,” Khan said. He turned to face Richard, and they kissed and fondled one another to insistent heat.

Richard was now accustomed to an unflinching touch, and was made bolder, though his body was sometimes not able to respond as neatly as he wished. As he turned underneath Khan’s exploring mouth, he reached up to bury his blunt fingered hand in Khan’s long black hair, but could not make his other arm obey a command to move, and the wretched thing ended up bent under his back.

“Jesu curse this arm,” he spat, breaking contact and wrenching his body around to free the limb.

“Hush, Richard,” Khan soothed, helping Richard to untwist the arm, “Don’t curse it. I have told you that its shape does not offend me.”

Richard glared at him impatiently, and then the hard glare softened and his fingers stroked lines down Khan’s concerned features. “You mistake me; I do not curse it for the shape but for the pain. I attempt to give you pleasure and the lumpen weight provides obstacles instead of assistance to mount our pleasure higher. Were the sap not blasted in the thing, I would be more accomplished.”

“I have no complaints,” Khan told him, rubbing a firm hand down the soft skin of the limb. Richard’s eyes fluttered closed and the fingers of that hand twitched minutely. “You feel me, yes?”

“Yes,” confirmed Richard. Then he opened his eyes wide, for Khan had brought Richard’s useless hand to Khan’s crotch, pressed the atrophied fingers to the heat of his shaft, and pressed himself gently against the skin.

“I can do this, if you want,” offered Khan, pressing again.

Richard ran his good hand along Khan’s flanks, and over his arse and squeezed.

“Use it for your pleasure, however you wish,” said Richard, breathless. There was reservation in his eyes, but also a willingness to trust. “If you think you can.”

Khan held his hand over Richard’s unmoving one and pressed again, and rolled his hips. Richard’s fingers could feel his lover thickening, and his own skin becoming slick with the dew of Khan’s pleasure.

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“Even if it should, you must not stop,” Richard said, and nuzzled Khan’s shoulder, and bit it. That only encouraged Khan to roll and push his hips more insistently. Richard’s good hand took a handful of Khan’s pale backside and squeezed and pushed the flesh. Khan adjusted how he straddled Richard, and Richard was able to reach further, to brush his fingers down Khan’s cleft, and against his tightening balls.

“Do not curse any part of you,” Khan panted into his ear as he rutted against Richard’s still hand, “Do not curse him whom I love to any degree. It will make it impossible to challenge the insulter of my love to a duel, and the paradox may kill me.”

“We will duel, love,” Richard breathed, clasping Khan and sucking bruises into his skin, “With our favourite weapons, and I’ll declare thee victor if you wish.”

“Everyone wins,” Khan groaned, “Oh, fuck, Richard…” and he shuddered through his climax, spilling himself on Richard’s hand and arm, while Richard wound his good arm around Khan’s waist and crushed him close.

*

On the tenth day, Khan was waiting in his odd black clothes of old, his expression a most peculiar blend of sorrow and anticipation.

Richard dismounted the mare (witness to these trysts and bothered not one whit by them. She rather enjoyed the lazy days offered of grazing by the creek in the shade) and stood before him.

“You are leaving,” he said.

“I did say I would, when my family had repaired the equipment. We have things to accomplish. We must be free.”

Richard nodded, although Khan could not tell what he was agreeing to or with.

“I would take you with me if I could,” Khan said.

“Would you?” Richard asked, without venom. More with resignation. “If your heaven made a gate fit to take me, would your fellow angels allow this frame to join their number?”

“You are no poor creature,” snapped Khan, “And yes. If the gate could be made to take us both, my family would see that I love, and learn to love you with me. But the quantum field can’t encompass us both. I have deeds to accomplish, as do you. But after, I swear…”

“Do not swear it,” Richard snarled at him, “Make no oath that you cannot for certain keep.”

Khan stood tall and folded his hands behind his back. “All right. I won’t. But without swearing to it, I will try. Once everything I must do is done, I’ll try to use the engine to come back to fetch you, Richard, and if the universe and fate allow, in this life or some other, I will find you.”

Richard settled his unwavering gaze upon his Khan, full of challenge, as usual, and assessment, and conviction. “I will believe you,” he said at last. “You said you must take your leave, and I had forgot. But I too must leave. My elder brother has the greater claim to the throne than either my brother Clarence or myself. We must begin to muster support for our cause. Civil war is coming.”

“Then win your war, my prince,” Khan said, unclasping his hands and settling them on Richard’s shoulders, “Reject bricks alone and build yourself a monument _._ If your family forsake you, bend your mind and will to your own self. Proclaim what you are worth. You are full of greatness. Make them see it.”

Richard swallowed hard and raised a hand to rest it over Khan’s chest, to feel his beating heart. “I fear that my worth to myself, now, is nought. All that I am worth, you take with thee.”

“Don’t be bitter, Richard. I have no choice in this.”

“You do,” Richard countered, “But I cannot blame you, just as I cannot help but sorrow. I had no beauty or joy, until you saw them in me. Who will I be when you go?”

“You will be Richard, Duke of Gloucester, scholar and soldier, and a true prince, too, if your brother wins his war.”

“Oh, I will help him to a crown,” Richard crooked a smile.

“And yourself too, if you can.”

“If I can,” Richard agreed.

Khan grinned at him, expression full of pride and faith. “You can.”

“I know.” Richard cast his eyes down then, and when he looked back up, all pride and wrath were gone. “Am I beautiful to you? As you are to me?”

“Yes,” said Khan, without hesitation. His prince was not made straight, but he was made strong, and Khan treasured all of him.

“My brothers do not believe I am made for graces. It is only for war that they have any use for me at all.”

Khan slid his arms around Richard’s shoulders and drew him close. He bent to press their foreheads together. “Richard, our bodies may define for us our roles; but only _we_ choose how to shape our souls.”

Richard pressed his fingers to the back of Khan’s neck and stroked the skin and the long hair there. “Then I will shape me to a dagger’s point,” he said roughly, “And prick hard those who cannot love me. But should you return to me – for thee, I will make me soft again.”

“Oh, be a little dagger-like still,” Khan’s soft huff of air was a sad kind of laugh, “I have a willing affection for some harder parts of you, soul and body.”

Richard took one of Khan’s hands and pressed it down between his own legs, to the hardness there. “You encourage me thus, my… love.”

“I encourage you in all, my prince, my King.” Khan kissed his Richard, and wriggled his fingers under Richard’s shirt, to touch the warm skin. “Win your crown, show them who you are, and remember me.”

Their mouths met, desperate, passionate, full of sorrow and loss, and of love and farewell.

Finally, Khan withdrew and took a step away. “Stand back, Richard. I wouldn’t have you hurt by this.”

 _I have no more of me left to hurt_ , Richard thought, _you take all of my heart with you_. But he stood back.

A disembodied voice crackled out of a strip of metal embedded in Khan’s black coat. “Ready, Khan? We’re about to activate the recall.”

Khan hesitated. His eyes met Richard’s. “Ready,” he said, and in flash of light he was gone.

Richard blinked the burning after-image from his eyes and stared at the absence of what he had learned to hold dear. Already, the last ten days seemed more dream than reality. He was alone, as he had always been alone, and though he wanted to believe that he was beautiful to someone once, there was no longer any proof of it.

*

Edward, with Richard and George’s aid, sowed dissent, nurtured doubt. He nursed mutiny and gathered allies, and in time the civil war for which he had plotted came to pass.

War suited Richard well, but even so soon as the victory feast, Richard knew that although he had acquitted himself with honour, his brothers still saw him as no more than a clever hunting dog, unfit for better office.

Richard gave his brother a rousing speech, having worked on pretty words for the occasion, but as the carousing began, he withdrew to quiet halls to contemplate the monument he would build to himself.

 _Because I cannot say pleasing courtly words, I am once more barked at by dogs and made a target for the blunt poniards of the feeble wit of lesser minds. I am offered neither reward nor position. Damn them, then. I will learn to dissemble. I will smile and murder while I smile. Since my family cannot love me, and he I love has left me, then I will live for myself._ _I will be the dagger and cut at everything for spite. I will be the twisted soul they say I am, yet so much blacker than their poor imaginations can conjure. I will build a monument of rage and blood and show them: you cannot treat a man as a beast but that the beast shall rise and devour them. They are so riven with their petty quarrels and hatreds that I, who hate them all equally, shall conquer._

Richard had rage enough and to spare to achieve his aims. And he would be honest with himself, even as he chose to be dishonest with all others alive.

_They, who say ‘I did this terrible thing, but only because I must’ and beg mercy will receive none. I will commit villainy and never claim quarter or mercy or reduce myself to mewling begging to eschew the blame. I will take it all on, and speak plain – I am a villain and repent not. I will learn to flatter and to coat venom with honey, that though all may suspect my aims, yet there will be no line I utter that would confess to the poison._

He closed his eyes and thought of Khan, and hoped that his own enterprise had at least met with success. _I yielded my heart once, and he keeps it still, and no other shall ever have it. The one who saw the humanity in me will be the only one to ever know I had that seed within. To all else, I will be a most monstrous monster, and build a monument on that, and damn all the rest of them to hell._

And Richard lied with a honeyed tongue, and won his crown, and found it as hollow as he had suspected but not admitted that it would be.

So he died more a beast than ever he had lived as one, reviled by all, taking cold comfort from his handcrafted monument to his isolation, never knowing that his love, centuries hence among the cold stars, had done the same.

*

They met, or rather, their spirits did. Wrecked and ruined and in despair, they were, but they met and clung to each other for the briefest moment.

“Our choices were perhaps not for the best,” Khan conceded, “I lost all, and you as well, for nothing.”

“We await rebirth,” Richard said, looking around at the formless light, “What a tiresome hell this is. To do it all again, and to what purpose?”

“I think the idea is to do it differently next time,” Khan said, holding Richard’s hand (his withered one, which here was not withered but curled warmly around the long, pale fingers of his love). “I’m sorry that I advised you so poorly.”

“I chose all that led here, most consciously,” Richard said, “The responsibility is mine alone. Hark, I am called. But I will look for you again.”

“Please,” said Khan, the burning ruin of his previous body’s death just a memory now, and that was fading to less than a dream, “As will I for you. I have missed you.”

But Richard was gone.

*

They met again. And again. Brief seconds in the formless light. Richard’s soul moved forward in time, reaching towards Khan’s distant star.

And Khan, his body and soul glittered through with quantum energy, moved backwards. Chasing his soul’s desire.

For many years and many lives, they did not meet except for those brief moments. In their waking, flesh lives, they never remembered each other; only that they were missing some vital thing required to make them whole.

And they were born and reborn and reborn, making new choices, trying to make better ones, atoning in some lives, committing new sins in others.

Being human is a hard, hard business.

But after hundreds of years in each direction, they met.

They didn’t know each other when it happened, but they recognised each other without knowing that they did.

Richard was still a soldier, but a healer too. He was still angry, but he’d learned compassion, too, having found his uncontrolled rage could only destroy and never build. He’d had brothers-in-arms this war: people whom he loved and who loved him, but that did not keep them alive, any more than love and desperation had (Khan believed) protected his siblings.

Thus fate gave Richard a taste of Khan’s life, as it was when first they met. Fate gave him other reminders too. A shoulder wrecked for a time (though that and his arm were still useful) and a ghost of a limp, a body-memory of that one long past.

Khan still bore in this new life the marks of his earliest, crafted superiority. He was a genius, a scientist, strong and beautiful and arrogant. But fate gave him a taste of Richard’s life, too. He knew the loneliness of a family and a world that could not love him, that could not or would not see the whole heart of him.

It took them a while, for the recognition to bring them together. But this new Richard swiftly killed to protect his soulmate. Then, at the pool, Richard’s new-minted soul named John Watson was prepared to give his life for another. He had learned sacrifice.

As for Khan, his soul named Sherlock Holmes learned at last that family was not the only arbiter of love; that someone could choose to kill and die for you, and ask nothing in return. He fully learned the humility and courage of choosing to trust someone not beholden to him by ties of blood in any way.

And at Baker Street that night, so unexpectedly alive, John/Richard and Sherlock/Khan looked at each other, and remembered without remembering, and fell together, hands and mouths and eager bodies.

John held Sherlock’s face between his two strong hands and explored his full lips and his sharp cheekbones and his jaw and throat with lips and tongue, nudging against the warm, pale skin with his nose and cheeks, and he murmured endearments and sighs. Sherlock’s hand gripped John’s hips and pulled him close.

“You could have died,” Sherlock whispered, voice nearly broken, “Again.” And he didn’t know why he added the last.

“I’m not leaving you,” John said, “Never again,” and he didn’t know what he meant either, except that it was true.

Sherlock, with fumbling fingers, stripped John of his clothes and John made short work of Sherlock’s shirt and trousers, and when they were naked they fell into Sherlock’s bed (the closest) and kissed and worshiped every span of skin. Sherlock mouthed John’s scar and suckled on his thighs; John nipped at Sherlock’s nipples and grasped those full buttocks, spread them to kiss and lick just to hear Sherlock keen with want, before turning Sherlock onto his back swallowing him to the root and rubbed sweet circles against his entrance with a slicked finger as he pulled and sucked with a greedy mouth.

Sherlock’s body arched like bow as he came, then collapsed onto the mattress for a few gasping moments, until he recovered his breath and, grinning, pulled John down to him, kissed him fiercely, and then rolled until John was underneath again. Then he wriggled down John’s body and lifted John’s legs, and buried his tongue in the hollow of his arse, a hand wrapped around John’s prick, and he licked and stroked until John’s back, too, arched and his come spattered over them both.

Afterwards, their bodies slick with sweat and more, they lay entwined, lazily caressing patterns in one another’s skin.

Sherlock found himself thinking (without knowing where the thought came from) - _I have shaped me to a dagger’s point and pricked hard those who cannot love me. But for thee, John, I will yield my heart, and make me soft again._

Beside him, John was thinking equally alien yet familiar thoughts. _I will proclaim what you are worth even to those who will not hear. You are full of greatness, Sherlock. I will make them see it._

Sherlock and John didn’t know where these thoughts came from. Later, they barely recalled that they had even thought these things – but the souls that had spent centuries reshaping again and again and again until they could find each other at last, listened to the vows, and remembered.

And now these lost souls, found again, go forward – life after life, always in some way together. Across time and across realities, they will always, always find their way to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably full of errors of the time period as well as Shakepearean dialect. It's certainly historically inaccurate, because it's based on Shakespeare's play and not, you know, the *facts*. Please forgive the lapses and enjoy the rimming. This Richard is based largely on Freeman's portrayal, but not on the 1970s setting of that production.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "The Star-crossed Series" by 221B_Hound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2398139) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)
  * [[Podfic] Well Met](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247730) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)
  * [[Podfic] The Star-crossed Series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4958944) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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